Comic for Thursday, Feburary 23rd

First, let me apologize a bit, I’ve hit the end of my buffer; so there was no early update for this one and Minus Years is running late. The root cause of this is that I decided to redraw both this page and the next page of minus years, collapsing some pages. It’s been awhile since I did that, and this took a lot of rejuggling. This is something I run into occasionally where I know the broad strokes, but if am left to my own devices I tend to get very wrapped up into in the details and tangents; for me it’s more about the world and characters, and occasionally I have to remind myself that we do have a plot to get along with 😉

It hits the same beats as the previous version of the page, but a few things have been combined and reorders in the next few pages – basically trying to make more characters collide to get more things to happen, rather than having things happen in parallel. We’ll still have things in parallel, but it’ll be like… four or five parallels rather than my preferred eight to ten 😛

Still, it’s rewriting/redrawing things is something I’ve done a good job at resisting lately, so it was a bit of a relapse 😐

Anyway…

We’ll get back on a track, I think I have things ordered out now.

And yes, I totally stole “fluffy” from the comments 😛 Peter has always had several lines making fun of Kally’s dragon, but I decided to borrow that one from the comments as I figured it’d be funny 😀

While the comments are rarely going to influence the actual plot, it certainly can add bits of levity and change the point of focus a bit here and there ;). Characters that people like tend to show up more, things people want explained get worked in sometimes, etc. No, we cannot have Rovak be the main character 😐 I’d have to rename the comic BOOM HAHAHAHAHA; while tempting, I think that’s a comic for someone that can draw explosions in more loving detail than me… 😮

Discussion (22) ¬

Yeah! I was helpful! or maybe helpful?? If you get a minute in your busy life I wouldn’t mind switching from a bunny to Fluffy. And I am seriously fired up anticipating Rovak and Kally meeting. Another random thought as Fluffy seems pretty substantial does that mean he can be ridden? If the rider where small enough, say an artificial being in the form of and adolescent girl?

Peter managing to be more threatening than ever with that last bubble.

And…I think more hilarious than ever with the third to last one, too. (WAIT THAT’S FROM THE COMMENTS?! +72 internets to whoever the hell that was. And all of their friends, and everyone who was in the comment chain…no, everyone on that page. That’s hilarious.)

Also, damn, he looks tired. (Actually, one panel he looks distracted, in his second he looks kinda sad…or is that supposed to be some kind of sincerity? It looks out of place on him, for some reason, either way.)
(And Mione looks very wary in that second to last panel…then again, no matter what part you consider, she really does have reason to be. ^.^ (Public plotting with someone approaching, it being Peter approaching…then just being in public at all with someone approaching…that job’s gotta be stressful, and like, 30x more so since Peter started messing with them.))

Giving a nod to something that came from us busy little commenters is a brilliant move on your part, since it underlines the friendship vibe the interactions here have. And, while you shouldn’t make any substantive changes, the occasional nod would be a great idea. ^^

I guess the best rule of thumb would be that if it doesn’t really change anything, and it strikes you as funny–go for it. 🙂

I love Peter in this strip. He is like the analyst’s analyst. I could just see Peter determining that this would be the discussion this morning and even without hearing any other conversation just to walk up drop this bombshell on them and walk away, or at least go into class where Tyler and nominally is a student and not the teacher.

This may be wild theories getting the better of me again, but hear me out. Peter is using low grade ellipses, and that’s why Tyler does not notice him walk up here.

Mione spots him, but we know Mione has seriously abnormal senses, but she also opens her eyes, like she sensed something, was confused, actually looked at it, sees Peter, and is surprised.

Supporting thesis points:
-It makes a lot of sense. Peter is a essentially a noncombatant that has survived countless operations, despite Kally’s magic seeming primarily offensive.
-Peter was a field agent for the IDS.
-Arron pioneered ellipses, and could have easily taught it Peter. If it is somehow innately linked, all the better as he is related to Peter.

I think it is a really compelling idea that can explain a lot about Peter, the more I think about it, the more I think this has been foreshadowed for a long time and I am only putting the dots together after seeing Tom say that Arron can do it/created it. Peter is repeatedly noted to be able to vanish if he does not want to be found and be very hard to track down. Combine hacking with Ellipses, and he would be a ghost.

It is certainly an interesting data point. I am not entirely sure that Eidos Interference means a Key (just because I think it is pretty open what a Key is or if they even really exist still), but it is another marker on the list of that Mium has whatever it is humans have.

It makes sense to me, as I cannot really see Ila having anything that Mium does not (besides a few extra points in adorable).

The “and push comes to shove” line would sound great in spoken dialogue.
There would probably be a small pause, “and, push comes to shove”, but you get away with lots of implications in spoken language that look strange written out.

Technical grammar point: at the end of Peter’s antepenultimate bubble, the period should technically go inside the quotes. Leave it if you think it looks better, though.

Also, art remark: it’s hard to tell how far away Mium is in panel 3. It seems like he’d still be in earshot (especially given that it’s, well, Mium), but I would think Tyler would be a little more careful than that, Peter’s appearance notwithstanding…

Putting the period in the quotes would be a silly US-ism, as I (a US geek) understand it. (I personally don’t hold with putting stuff that’s not part of the material being quoted inside the quotation marks, unless it’s clearly marked as such by surrounding it in square brackets, like “[…]”, “[sic]”, or when you replace a pronoun with whatever it refers to because you aren’t quoting the part of the text that makes it possible to understand the pronoun.)